


Drames et comédies, allant tant bien que mal

by Citagazze



Category: La vie parisienne - Meilhac/Halévy/Offenbach, Párizsi élet (Színház)
Genre: 19th Century, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, M/M, Polyamory, Theatre, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2757194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Citagazze/pseuds/Citagazze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raoul de Gardefeu has an exceptional plan for an anniversary gift for Métella. Of course, one knows what they say of the best-laid plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drames et comédies, allant tant bien que mal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



> Based primarily upon the 2007 Budapesti Opperettszínház production starring Hommonay Zsolt, Szabó P. Szilveszter, and Szendy Szilvi.

>   
>  PHILOSTRATE.
> 
> A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,  
>  Which is as brief as I have known a play;  
>  But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,  
>  Which makes it tedious; for in all the play  
>  There is not one word apt, one player fitted.  
>  And tragical, my noble lord, it is;  
>  For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;  
>  Which when I saw rehears’d, I must confess,  
>  Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears  
>  The passion of loud laughter never shed.
> 
> –William Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_

To place the blame entirely upon Eustache Cloutier would be, admittedly, unfair. While Raoul de Gardefeu was willing to boast of any number of vices, there was nothing particularly attractive about injustice and he was thus forced to concede that while Cloutier was his source of inspiration, all other fault was entirely his own. In any case, it would be difficult to accuse anyone _else_ of forcing Gardefeu to _work_.

It was just that M. Cloutier was eminently blamable, when all was said and done. He was the vague sort of family friend who might have known your father in childhood and you were therefore obliged to take lunch with him every so often once you reached a certain age. A crucial component of these lunches, Gardefeu understood, was sitting through a litany of unwarranted and generally unavailing counsels. With M. Cloutier, however, the expectation was to withstand a veritable barrage of misery. The man's life seemed to be at all moments standing tip-toed on the precipice of disaster, and he never had any lack of time to expound upon it.

His latest venture was a small theatre he had resurrected from near closure. The establishment was apparently an ingrate, as it responded to the gesture by doggedly refusing to make revenue and staggering slowly toward death.

"It's because of the damned _operéttes_ ," Cloutier said, picking dourly at his cassoulet. "There's no room in the Voclain for their orchestras, and it's the only thing Paris wants to see."

"Isn't it," agreed Gardefeu, who was trying not to appear as though he was watching the crowd pass outside the café instead of his dining partner.

"They're all absurd, anyway." Cloutier gestured emphatically with his fork, and a bit of duck flew across the table onto Gardefeu's tie. _Its wings are no more, and yet it soars._  Thinking of Bobinet, he composed a mental elegy as Cloutier continued. "Every one the same — not just the infernal, screeching music, but the stories as well. Some dull gentleman and his prudish lady make eyes at each other while the soubrettes tease, there's a comical misunderstanding and everyone gets married. It is the most superfluous form of entertainment man has created."

"Indeed," Gardefeu said, losing the thread of his poetic composition. "I take it you prefer more... classical works?" The cassoulet was mostly gone. There was an end to the lunch in sight, and proof of a merciful god.

Cloutier nodded, and sighed, dare one say, theatrically. "Oh, for anyone who would stage something decent. _Anything_ without can-can dancers."

To say that Gardefeu was formulating an idea would be an overstatement, but he generally did not need an idea to grow past conception to act upon it. That, he was wholly convinced, was what separated him from the class of men such as the one seated across from him.

"I may be able to help you," Gardefeu said slowly. "My wife, you see, is a great lover of arts. She adores a well-mounted play – _Romeo and Juliet_ is her favourite."

"All ladies adore a tragic romance," Cloutier opined through his last bite of cassoulet.

"I believe _ma chère_ Métella greatly appreciates the sword fighting. And the... well. In any case, I have a proposal for you: I will direct the best production of _Romeo and Juliet_  that Paris has ever seen, the little Voclain will profit marvellously, and Métella will have a most superb present for our first anniversary."

Cloutier's eyes widened, and an unaccountably rodent-like smile spread across his sallow face. It faded just as quickly as he asked with some hesitance, "Now, Raoul, do you know how to direct a play? There's an art, you know—"

" _Ma chère_ Métella informs me that there is very little relation between what I know how to do and what I, in fact, do, and we've both agreed it has overwhelmingly turned out for the best."

* * *

 Bobinet was far more enthusiastic about the entire proposal than Gardefeu had anticipated. Then again, there had always been something of the artist in him.

In any case, he was in high spirits as he sprinted down the aisles of the theatre. Perhaps not sprinted, Gardefeu thought from his vantage point on the edge of the stage. It was difficult to find an appropriate description for the sight of an enthused Bobinet in motion.

The theatre itself, discounting the flailing bundle of limbs bolting through it, was lovely, if only a few years from decrepitude. It had a high, vaulting ceiling and embellishments in the Oriental style, as was the fashion. The seats and deep reddish carpeting appeared threadbare, and the stage was still cluttered with props and abandoned set pieces, but the former only lent charm and the latter was easily mended.

When Bobinet reached the foot of the proscenium, Gardefeu noted that he was not unaccompanied. Something flopped about his ankles that seemed more like a poorly folded blanket that had been left to gather dust than like any of God's creatures, yet, against all odds, the beast appeared to be living, breathing, and salivating.

"What, Bobinet, is that animate rag pile?"

Bobinet hoisted it into his arms and set it upon the stage, where it set to waddling about the well-trodden boards. " _Herbert, un chien_. I was talking to Monsieur Cloutier about the history of the theatre — well, he was talking to me — and apparently he, the dog, I mean, is something of a fixture. Cloutier claims he's well-bred; in his words, 'He has a better pedigree than half of Paris society, but what does that say?' I believe that's what he said, in any case."

"It is terrible," said Gardefeu.

Bobinet offered one of his odd, wistful half-smiles. "I rather like dogs. It's only too bad we aren't doing _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. We could make use of him there."

Gardefeu shook his head vehemently. "Out of the question." He proffered his arm and helped Bobinet clamber onto the stage, a complicated affair. The question of how precisely Bobinet was assembled baffled even Gardefeu, who had seen rather a lot of his friend in his time. "Here, help me clear the stage. I'd like to see what we have to work with."

Obediently, Bobinet took to the job, gathering the pots of silk plants into his arms until it was doubtful he could see at all. Nonetheless, he managed to navigate around the indefatigable Herbert. Bobinet deserved a gift of his own, Gardefeu mused as he lifted an ungainly box of artificial (God willing) bones. It was only — it was rather difficult to determine exactly when to celebrate some form of anniversary. And moreover, what precisely would they be celebrating? Bobinet was not his wife, he was his... _petit Bob_. One did not usually laud the man who took up with one's wife, even if the relationship could be more precisely defined as, "Man who took up with one's wife and, improbably, with _one_ as well, first discretely and eventually jointly."

 Gardefeu was pulled rudely from his reverie by a strange yelp from Bobinet (or perhaps Herbert). He rushed to his side to see what it was, precisely, that had so alarmed his friend. Bobinet trembled at the edge of what must have once been quite a large pool of blood. Stage blood, one fervently hoped.

"I suppose it isn't real," Bobinet said sheepishly. Sheepish was not an expression that _should_ have set well on him, but just as improbably as all else about Bobinet, it did. "Perhaps left over from a production of _Mac_ –"

Gardefeu was not a superstitious soul by nature, but he had the inkling that this venture was already leaning rather heavily upon fortune. His hands still occupied with the crate, he was unable to slap one over Bobinet's mouth. The only reasonable alternative was rather more appealing, and Shakespearian, in any case.

" _Silence, je vous coupe la parole¹_ ," he said after breaking the kiss, because Benedick had always been his favourite, in any case. It was a pity Métella had missed the moment; Gardefeu felt certain she would have applauded.

* * *

The next matter was translation.

Bobinet sat in an odd, hunched posture, riffling through scripts, while Gardefeu lay sprawled on the sofa, flinging bits of meat at Herbert. They were in Gardefeu's home, as it was closer to the theatre and Métella would be engaged in some manner of social gathering for the rest of the evening. Herbert had not joined them through any will of Gardefeu's, but from an attachment he seemed to have formed with Bobinet. Keeping him occupied in chasing down morsels at least prevented him from staying still long enough to allow his drool to seep into the carpet, and the tedious process of comparing texts had long since given Gardefeu a headache.

"There's Laroche," Gardefeu said uncertainly. "It has an introduction by Dumas."

"Does anyone care about the introduction? But Laroche is quite adept, set it aside." It was Laroche that he had used, in his opinion rather masterfully, on Bobinet that afternoon, so his partiality toward it had increased.

A few minutes of near silence, aside from Herbert's wheezing, then: "Guizot?"

"Is it any good?"

"He calls it a _comédie_ , so perhaps not. Oh, here's Hugo."

Gardefeu rolled onto his back and contemplated the ceiling. "If it's Hugo, it will be tedium and melodrama at once. Return to the Laroche."

"You have the wrong Hugo," said a voice that was decidedly not Bobinet's. 

Springing from his pronate position, Gardefeu discovered that Métella had somehow made her return unnoticed, a feat particularly suprising in that going unnoticed was amongst the _only_ things Métella had not mastered. 

"It's his son, and it's divine," she continued airily, sweeping around the side of the sofa and collapsing artfully onto the half no longer occupied by Gardefeu. " _Et vraiment, tout pèse si lourdement à mon humeur, que la terre, cette belle création, me semble un promontoire stérile; le ciel, ce dais splendide, regardez! ce magnifique plafond, ce toit majesteux, contellé de flammes d'or_ ² ...I could go on."

The men applauded unreservedly, and Métella beamed. "I have old friends in theatre... Rather a long story, or several long stories, depending."

"Such feeling!" exclaimed Bobinet, not hearing Métella. "Truly – the higher things of which I spoke – oh, if this weren't a gift for you, how you would shine as Juliet!"

Métella's lovely eyebrows quirked several times throughout the outburst until she seemed to have managed to comprehend his meaning. "A gift? Oh, never mind that for the moment. _Romeo and Juliet_ , is it? I really don't think I would be suited."

"Perhaps not," Bobinet conceded, and Gardefeu privately agreed. The thought of watching his beloved wife laid out on a marble — or something resembling marble — slab was impossible. He took her hand, but felt a bit foolish about it in the same moment. Métella turned him a private smile, her cheeks reddened from energy, and kissed him quickly. Then her eye was caught by Bobinet, who did, indeed, look rather striking with his vulpine profile turned against the fire.

" _Cher_ Bobinet, on the other hand..." she said as she curled against her husband's side. "He has a theatrical soul."

"A great deal of pathos," Gardefeu agreed as his friend blinked at them.

"Tempered with some choler, of course. I can't possibly see him as a Romeo, but perhaps a Tybalt."

Gardefeu snorted, remembering more than one ill-advised encounter. "You can forget any role that involves a sword. Perhaps if the play called for a giraffe..."

"Oh, really, _petit Bob_ is a fœtal giraffe at best."

Métella laughed her sparkling laugh, and seeing Bobinet's rather injured expression, reached out to pull him onto the sofa beside her. Evidently having noticed Herbert for the first time, she opened and closed her mouth a few times before reaching her question. "Now," she said, resting a hand on a thigh of each of the men, "You both _really_ must tell me what this is all about."

Gardefeu cleared his throat. "You remember my father's friend, Monsieur Cloutier? You see, it is entirely his fault..." 

* * *

¹ "Peace! I will stop your mouth." _Much Ado About Nothing_ , Act V, Scene IV. Laroche translation.

² "And indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire–" _Hamlet_ , Act II, Scene II. Hugo translation.


End file.
